THE Friday Boys are a disparate group of men spread across Tyneside who meet once a week - 'always on a Friday' - to talk about the arts, raise a glass to recently departed heroes and villains and, at the evening's end, down a whisky or two. The FBs have only one golden rule - talk of the working week is strictly off-limit.

Monday, 29 August 2016

A few years back, an album of early Beach Boys’ numbers
labelled Beach Hits or Greatest Hits or even Surfer Girl was a common sight. Of
course, on closer inspection it wasn’t THE Surfer Girl album, but a collection
of songs recorded in their pre-Capitol days (occasionally rounded out by
numbers by other artists) produced by Hite and Dorinda Morgan between 1961 and
1962 when the Boys changed from The Pendletones to The Beach Boys and then,
briefly, to Kenny and the Cadets. It was 1990 before Steve Hoffman located the
original recordings, which he re-mastered and in 1991 (on DCC Compact Classics)
released as Lost and Found, containing the master takes and a selection of
other takes from the sessions. Following that, there was an aborted attempt to
have a subscription release of the full sessions (as remastered by Hoffman)
under the title, First Wave, in 2000 by Beach Boys historian and collector Brad
Elliott, but the band claimed that Bruce Morgan, Hite and Dorinda’s son, didn’t
have permission to issue the set and put a stop to it.

So… here we are in 2016 and we have the official release of
the most complete set of recordings yet by the nascent Beach Boys, this time
mastered by engineer, producer, mixer and long-time Brian Wilson associate Mark
Linett, recently seen playing Brian’s engineer Chuck Britz in the film Love and
Mercy (2014).

Although only three of finished numbers (Surfin’
Surfin’Safari and Surfer Girl) have come to be regarded as iconic early Beach
Boys’ songs, in the manner of other recent collections, like the Smile Sessions
box set, this is a fine example of rock archaeology and it pays to listen to
the evolution of a song and the ways the Boys change their contributions and
the tone of their vocals. Surfer Girl is a particularly good example of this,
with the first take painted in much darker hues than the version we're familiar with and missing the lyrics to the bridge.

Lavender, a sentimental tale of lost love written by Dorinda
Morgan, shows already how mature and skilful a vocal arranger Brian Wilson already was and the
finished version is fleshed out with some stylish jazz-inflected stand-up bass
by Al Jardine and guitar licks by the 15 year-old Carl Wilson.

The astute among you may have noticed that there would appear to be the odd take missing (take four of Luaua, for example), but what is presented here is what's left. Either there were no other takes or the tapes are missing.

Jim Murphy’s excellent liner notes complement the set,
filling in the gaps and explaining the genesis of songs like, Surfin’, which came
about as a result of a Mike Love and Dennis Wilson fishing trip during which
they discussed surf instrumentals and wondered why nobody had sung about the
topic.

The band’s early influences are clear: from the jazzy Four
Freshmen-style vocal arrangements of Lavender, to the doo-wop (via Jan and
Dean’s Baby Talk) of Surfin’, to the Chuck Berry influenced Surfin’ Safari, to
the surf guitar in Carl’s Beach Boy Stomp (aka Karate).

The set closes with two songs by Kenny and the Cadets from
March 1962 – Brian and Carl and their mother Audree, with Al and Val Poliuto of
the Jaguars singing over two pre-recorded tracks written by the Morgans (though
credited to their son, Bruce to help him on the way as a songwriter).

A month later and The Beach Boys are making the demos at
Western Recorders that would secure them a contract with Capitol and their
first album, Surfin’ Safari.

For the dedicated fan, this is a fascinating and revealing
picture of the birth of a band who would become one of a handful of major players
in the development of rock music.